Tough to be smart...

Everyone who's worked for a boss or inside a team has always felt at one time or another an immense amount of frustration. The better you accomplish your job and the smarter (you think) you are, you can see a lot of slackers and “politically active” co-workers whose job it is to escape work, steer trouble, hold on to their fort and make your life miserable.

The more sensitive one is, the more difficult it becomes to ignore this underground, systematic deconstruction going on, day in, day out, and it becomes extremely difficult to carry on, yet alone to deal with it.

To those of you in that predicament, I propose a simple trick, inspired from my hero of the moment. I'd simply ask myself “How would Obama deal with that?” More on this later...

Of course, if you're a Cheney fan, you can substitute the name, but I won't guarantee the results!

Making an easy task difficult...

“Vision Park City” is a process meant to define how we, the citizens, see our little city and its future. This great community exercise, that a group of us are in the midst of preparing, was an undertaking made unnecessarily difficult for the volunteers who signed up for it.

I believe the consultants in charge of the project had no idea how they could obtain the data they needed and asked the volunteers to design a model that would meet their needs. They decided to let them invent a tool they had sold, sight unseen, to the city. This has been a rather laborious process and I feel that we – the volunteers – have been robbed of our time and efforts.

As the product is nearing readiness, the consultants seem now eager to regain control and claim ownership. I wonder who, among the City's decision makers was charged with vetting the consultants and also wonder what goal was presented to them in relation with their assignment?The City should learn from that fiasco, make sure that the deliverables meet the objectives set and take appropriate precautions as similar projects are developed in the future.

Big, beautiful and expensive!

These days, washers and dryers are downright... Beautiful. Their organic, rounded styling and their stunning colors make them sculptures you'd want to have in the middle of your living room, not inside your laundry! The problem with these handsome appliances is that their price mirror their sheer beauty. A great marketing ploy to get more money from consumers. Go to the any appliance website and compare an old fashion washer-dryer sets with its space-age counterparts. You'll see that if you're willing to double the investment, you can upgrade a trip back into the 1950's well into the 21st century!

Creative outburst

For many months, I had not had too many chances to dig into my mind and look for creative ideas. In the past couple of weeks, this has changed dramatically. I'm now in the middle of two projects that have rocked my mind and that wake me up at night with a flood of ideas I fall for. Don't get me wrong, no one has given me an award yet, it's just my own self-satisfaction at work. At any rate, I'm impressed to see that there's still a good supply of creativity left in me. Hopefully, that should carry me for another decade or two...

Station-wagons and SUV

In a not so distant past, station-wagons had a clear reason for existing. They were the logical roomier and more practical extension of a sedan. For that very very reason, automakers could only sell them for a tad higher than their more elegant counterparts. All that changed with the advent of the SUV that started back in the 80's with the highly popular Jeep Cherokee and later with the Ford Explorer.

With what was nothing but a “glorified” station wagon, perhaps a bit more rugged and with more ground clearance, manufacturers realized they could significantly raise their prices and their profits just by giving the driver a more commanding view... Will the re-invention of the American auto industry return to basic common sense and re-legitimize the good old station-wagon?

Time. More precious as it flies...

The more time passes, the more it becomes incredibly precious. I'm talking about good time, when all is well; health, family, friends, good fortune and great feelings. This is not a new concept: Scarcity breeds higher value. It may be the most obvious concept in the world, but until that very day I had never visualize it in such an brutal light. My time, your time, everybody's time becomes more precious each passing second. If you're a lawyer, a plumber or a gardener, this might even mean that you should charge more for each passing hour that you are at someone's service.

Of course, this is solely seen from your own perspective, it's your very own time and it's the most valuable to you. The service rendered, due perhaps to your continuously improved skills might be better too, but chances are your client or boss doesn't see it in quite the same light. At any rate whether you're able to sell you time for more or not, you're now warned; it's awfully precious. Starting today, don't squander it anymore!

Excuses, excuses...

In trying moving things forward, there is always an ample of supply of reasons for not acting that never fail to come up. People have different values, are working from different agendas and operating at different speeds. All these variations create the kind of interferences that can jam up the gear box and bring everything to a complete stop.

Undisclosed agendas often are the big problems that remove transparency from the process and are meant to promote the status quo. This is when it's okay to stop “playing by the rules” and start moving ahead.